Live to 100 by smoking rosemary

Onions round the neck to cure mumps, smoking rosemary to ease breathing and horseradish and gin to cure PMT. Old wives tales?

Well, according to one very old wife, not at all – they are, in fact, the key to longevity.

Old dame smoked rosemary

The remedies were unearthed in a 19th century book titled How To Live 100 Years – found in the home of a woman who lived to be 102.

Lillie Hogg swore by the spurious ointments and tinctures and now her great-niece wants to re- invigorate them for the 21st century.

The centennarian died in 1973 and her belongings passed to her descendants.

But it was 35 years before Elizabeth Harfleet, a nutritionist, stumbled across her great-aunt’s book, published in 1870.

Other ‘cures’ in the faded, pocket-sized manual include a paste of mustard and lemon juice to remove freckles, herbal anti-fat tablets and ‘water as hot as can be bourne’ for colonic irrigation.

One note on the raspberry leaf tablets – ‘for a speedy confinement’ – said: ‘I took these tablets, was baking all afternoon, went into hospital at 5.30pm and baby had arrived by 9pm.’

Mrs Harfleet, 46, from Manchester, said: ‘Lillie had an interest in health and remedies. I think it’s something more and more people are interested in now – everyone is on the look-out for natural remedies.’